Opinions on Euthanasia: Germany and Central Europe

Seven letters, manuscript and typescript, from medical scientists based in Germany and countries in Central Europe, replying to a question on whether they thought euthanasia could ever be justified.

The Vienna branch of the Centraleuropäischer Pressedienst had apparently sent these scientists a standard set of questions in late 1933, on their attitude to euthanasia. The scientists replying are:

Sándor Korányi [Alexander von Koranyi] (1866-1944), physiologist, Budapest;

Jan Belehrádek (1896-), Professor, Masarykovy University, Brno;

Richard Siebeck (1883-), director of the Medizinische Klinik, Heidelberg;

Leon Asher (1865-1943), Physiologisches Institut, Bern;

Albrecht Bethe (1872-), Institut für animal Physiologie, Frankfurt-am-Main;

Ludolf von Krehl (1861-1937), Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Medizinische Forschung, Institut für Pathologie, Heidelberg;

Paul Jensen (1868-1952), MD, Göttingen.

November 1933

1 file (7 letters)

Purchased from Hinterberger (or possibly Heck), Vienna, August 1935 (acc.69047)

Although the precise reason for the Centraleuropäischer Pressedienst's sending out of this enquiry is not known, it took place at a time when euthanasia was being discussed as part of a complex of ideas around issues of "racial hygiene", in particular in the newly Nazi-controlled Germany. The new Nazi régime had passed a law in July 1933 enabling the sterilisation of people with hereditary conditions and in September Hitler had instructed staff to investigate the possibility of "mercy killing". A formal programme of killing mentally and physically disabled people and those with long-term mental illness, a programme known as "T4", officially began in 1939 and ran until 1941 (with continued killing by local agencies even after its formal closure).